Auden brings new perspective to theatre
By Gillian Weitz-Clancy

     After the tumultuous season the Hall theater department experienced in 2001-2002, a new year has begun with renewed hope. Kathy Keith, who now heads up the department, is joined this year by Scott William Auden. While relatively new to the teaching profession, Auden has much experience in theatre and is enthusiastic about his move to Hall this year. He plans to make use of his acting and set construction experience to offer a new perspective to the classes he teaches.

    

Photo/Zak Shapiro

Scott William Auden joins teaching staff at Hall

Auden was born in Connecticut, but has taken the opportunity to experience a number of other locations and cultures, including those of Oklahoma, South Korea, Massachusetts, and Japan. As for his love of theater, Auden says that he has always had a strong interest, but began to get serious about it when he spent a year teaching in Japan.

     Most recently, Auden was employed at Conard High School supervising in-school suspensions. He has also worked extensively with local theaters here in Connecticut, including the Hole in the Wall Theater in New Britain and Theaterworks in Hartford. These two theaters have provided Auden with both acting and technical expertise. Naturally, Auden saw the opportunity to teach theater at Hall as a wonderful one, and he is very excited to be working here.

     Auden is teaching a total of four classes this year, including two Specialized Performance Study classes otherwise known as “Black Box Theater classes. As for goals, Auden says that he “would like to see the Specialized Performance technical theater classes, Auden jokingly lists his top priority as being that all students “will leave with the same number of limbs that they started with.”

     One of the most important things that he intends to work on is making sure that the tech students “know and feel that they are essential to the art of theater, and are artists as much as anyone else.” He really wants to emphasizes the importance of improving communication and contact between the actors and “techies” and encouraging them all to work as a team. The lack of direct communication between actors and techies is like “having football practice with the quarterbacks entirely separated from the running-backs, and expecting them to be able to win a game,” Auden says.

     It will probably take a little while to get accustomed to how things operate here at Hall but Auden is looking forward to the transition and becomin a member of the Hall community. There will be many challenges facing Auden and the department this year however; the ongoing struggle to find a balance between educational and artistic goal, as well as issues like cast size and finding a middle ground between choosing shows to fit the actors and choosing actors to fit the shows. “The best educational experience may be to put up a 60 person show where everyone is still learning, whereas the best artistic production may only call for 12 kids who have had extensive experience,” Auden explains. His goal is to find some kind of middle ground between the two.

     Auden is happy to find that there is a theater program of such magnatude available to students, and is excited to see the marvelous extent of the community’s commitment to the arts in general. Auden seems to have made an impact on his classes already, with his intensity and excitement about the possibilities that the upcoming year will reveal for the department. After the first day of class, senior Brian C. said simply and truthfully: “I like this guy!"